In light of last week’s birth control pill recall, I’ve been talking with a lot of women about the whole question of what they and their partners would do in the event of an unplanned pregnancy. Most of them said they’d discussed this with their partners and were on the same page, but there were a few who knew that their partners would not want them to abort, even though that was their preference.

I have had only one pregnancy scare—when I was a 20 year old college senior. I had been on the pill for a year and didn’t realize that every now and then, it would make my period dry up completely (this happened about once a year throughout my twenties.) Cue the freakout. It was about three months before graduation, I’d been accepted to grad school and was planning to move to New York. I had a quavery-voiced phone call with my boyfriend, who lived a few hours away, and he said, without hesitation, “If you’re pregnant and you don’t want to keep it, I hope you’d at least consider having it so I could raise it by myself.” It was 100% the right response, and while it didn’t make me any less apprehensive about possibly being pregnant, it did at least reassure me that he knew the decision was ultimately mine and would not abandon me or try to skip out on his responsibility. He was a righteous dude…still is, in fact. And women should expect nothing less than that.

But for women who are concerned about their partner’s differing views on contraception and abortion, check out this advice from Dan Savage to a young reader. It’s not only solid gold advice, but introduced me to the term Bitch Puddin’, which I will be adding to my vocabulary forthwith:

I am a 16-year-old female. I have been in a monogamous relationship with a boy for seven months. My first, his too. …he started doing something when we are in the midst of being sexual that I don’t understand. He will stick the tip of his hard penis just inside the opening to my vagina, again and again. I guess you could call it “probing.” I know enough to know that there’s a slight risk of pregnancy, as pre-come can get a woman pregnant, and he doesn’t wear a condom when he does this. We are planning on having complete vaginal intercourse in the next few months, with condoms and birth control, but this is happening now, and it worries me.

This is what I need advice about: I know that there is a very small risk of pregnancy even if we use condoms and birth control. I couldn’t handle a child at my age or the humiliation of being pregnant at 16 and having to walk around town with the evidence out for all to see. I would have an abortion. He disagrees strongly with abortion, but he’s not the one who would have to go through it all! So I would probably end up having an abortion without telling him, which seems completely unfair.

No Clue What To Do

Dan’s answer:

Probing is low-risk for pregnancy, NCWTD, but there’s still some risk. What worries me is that this activity makes you uncomfortable and either you haven’t said anything to your boyfriend, or you have said something and he’s doing it anyway. Tell him no more probing, if you haven’t already, and if he initiates probing after you’ve made it clear that you’re not comfortable with it, break the fuck up with him. Which brings us to…

You’re going to have to go Bitch Puddin’ on his ass, NCWTD. Memorize this, say it to him, and mean it: “If I let you stick your dick in my vagina and I get pregnant, I am getting an abortion. If you can’t live with that—if you aren’t willing to shoulder the psychic risk of knowing that your girlfriend would get or actually got an abortion, while she shoulders the actual physical risk of an unplanned pregnancy—then I am never going to let you stick your dick in my vagina. You’re free to disagree with my choice, of course, but you can’t prevent me from making that choice. So what’s it going to be?”

SRSLY. Especially regarding the “probing”, which is a classic bad rookie move and needs to be called out immediately.

Granted, going all Bitch Puddin’ on that dude might be tough for a 16 year old girl lit up with hormones and first love. But I hope she manages to do it anyway. And regardless, 16 year olds aren’t the only ones getting pregnant, and that advice holds for every woman who might need to remind her partner that he’s not entitled to make decisions about what she’d do in case of pregnancy, or get butt-hurt and pressure her if she doesn’t agree with him.

7 Responses to “Being a Bitch about Birth Control”

I have been in this situation and it is utterly as sucky as can be imagined. Due to a lapse in judgement we were in the position of having a toddler, being in a tenuous financial position, and with my mother dying of sudden onset pulmonary fibrosis.

We agonised over what to do, to the point of having a consultation with a local health clinic about our options. Thankfully, there were only one or two halfhearted protesters there at the time (They have trouble drumming up people willing to stand around and wave signs in sub-freezing weather in southeast pennsylvania. ) and the clinic staff were really supportive and amazing, neither judging or pushing, being very direct and honest about things.

We ultimately decided to go ahead with things, and our daughter turned 8 today. But it is a period that will always weigh heavily on us both, it is hard not to feel guilty for even considering aborting. And it is hard not to realise that we would have very different lives right now if we had. Possibly better, possibly not.

We haven’t even figured out how to discuss the entire issue with our children when the time comes. Which will be all too soon with a turning 12 son and a now-8 daughter.

But I thank whatever powers there may be that we had the choice to make, and that noone made it FOR us. And I will fight to the death to make sure it stays that way. It is hard enough to be in that spot without some uninvolved third party deciding what is and is not ‘best’ for you and your family. I can think of few, if any, choices more profoundly personal and private, save perhaps the right to choose one’s own time to exit the world gracefully if that is one’s choice.

I think more men need to be lectured like this. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have risky PIV sex if you can’t deal with the decisions made by your partner. Don’t act like one has nothing to do with the other.

Dan is so right on with this. In any relationship, abortion should be a non-negotiable option for any female who wants it. If she chooses to involve the guy, it’s her decision, but she doesn’t have to.

For men who whine that it isn’t fair, I say take it up with Mother Nature. Yeah, it isn’t fair that women have died for millenia from pregnancy and its consequences, either. But that’s the way it is, and because we risk our lives when we become pregnant, the decision whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term must always be ours.

First of all, as far as I’m concerned, any man who does something sexual to a woman that he could reasonably infer she doesn’t want, is morally a rapist even if it doesn’t fit the legal definition in a particular jurisdiction. (And a man who can’t reasonably infer that a woman who doesn’t want to get pregnant, doesn’t want an uncovered penis in her vagina, is either very ignorant or very stupid.)

Second, men who are opposed to abortion, must do everything in their power to ensure their sperm do not meet the eggs of women who don’t want to be pregnant. They should be regarding any activity where their sperm has even the faintest possibility of meeting an egg, as reckless endangerment of human life. If they’re really serious, they should not be putting their unvasectomised penises anywhere near any woman’s vagina*. If that’s a sacrifice they’re unwilling to make, but they think it’s OK to ask women to be willing to risk pregnancy and childbirth, they’re not only selfish assholes, they’re hypocritical and unserious in their anti-abortion stance. End of story.

*I’m not saying no sex, I’m saying no PIV. PIV is not magic. There are plenty of other ways of sharing pleasure and intimacy.